by WES FERGUSON
As the summer heat fuels worries of blackouts, the Pedernales Electric Cooperative is urging members to conserve power.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid, issued emergency alerts for power conservation this past weekend. Though afternoon temperatures have lessened a bit this week, ERCOT said demand on generators remains high.
“We have not gone into a situation at all this summer where we’ve had to institute rolling blackouts,” said Anne Harvey, PEC spokeswoman. “However, we are prepared to do so when we receive the mandate, and it truly is a mandate. It’s something we must do when they get to that point.”
PEC buys power from the Lower Colorado River Authority, and when blackouts are instituted LCRA informs PEC how much electricity it must stop using, she said.
“The more load we have to take off, the more people that would be affected,” Harvey said. “What we try to do is have it be 10-minute intervals, but it could take longer to bring people back on.”
“So far, the best thing people can do to help avoid those types of situations is to conserve electricity, especially between 3 and 7 (p.m.),” Harvey said.
For information about conserving energy, she added, visit the PEC website at www.pec.coop.
Uncollected credits
This summer, the electric cooperative has seen a flood of members and former members claiming previously unclaimed capital credits that were distributed in 2007 for memberships from 1960-76.
As of May 2011, about 40,000 capital credits checks — totaling $4.2 million and issued in 2007 and 2008 — still had not been cashed and had expired. PEC sent checks to members’ last known addresses.
The public can go to www.pec.coop to review a list of members for whom PEC is holding unclaimed property.
“We’re very pleased that it’s going back to the members,” Harvey said. “We appreciate them taking the time to fill out the forms, and we’re working as quickly as we can to get all that processed.”
She said the rush to resend the capital credits has not hurt PEC financially.
“This is something we have planned for,” she said.
